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What is the First Thing We Wish Others Would Do To Us?

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Individualize. Understand our uniqueness so that they treat us according to how God has made us, not how they wish he had made us.

This is why those who say “The Golden Rule is off-based — when I treat others how I prefer to be treated, they don’t like it.”

The problem with that statement is that it misses the crucial step. Each of us want to be treated individually and understood accurately. Do that for others first, then do unto them as you would have done unto you if those things were true of you.

One of the Best Lewis Quotes Ever

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CS Lewis:

Who can endure a doctrine which would allow only dentists to say whether our teeth were aching, only cobblers to say whether our shoes hurt us, and only governments to tell us whether we were being well governed?

Not even sure how to categorize that, but it has a thousand ramifications. Great insight.

And the Greatest Enemy of Creativity and Innovation Is…

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Efficiency.

Patrick Lencioni makes the case very well in his article, The Enemy of Creativity and Innovation. Here’s a great part:

I’ve become convinced that the only way to be really creative and innovative in life is to be joyfully inefficient….

Efficiency requires that we subdue our passion and allow it to be constrained by principles of logic and convention. Innovation and creativity require us to toss aside logic and convention, even without the near-term promise of a payoff. Embracing both at the same time seems to me to be a recipe for stress, dissonance and mediocrity, and yet, that is exactly what so many organizations—or better yet—leaders, do.

They exhort their employees to utilize their resources wisely and to avoid waste and redundancy, which makes perfect sense. They also exhort them to be ever-vigilant about finding new and better products or processes, which also makes sense. And yet, combining these two perfectly sensible exhortations makes no sense at all, and only encourages rational, responsible people to find a middle ground, something that is decidedly neither efficient nor innovative.

This is why I don’t talk about efficiency a ton. It matters and has its place. But my goal is effectiveness, and often times the greatest path to effectiveness is quite inefficient.

More on this in my book.

A Few Odd, Possibly Advanced, Yet Simple Tips for Writers

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A few random tips for those who write long things (namely, books), gathered or reinforced from my own experience in writing What’s Best Next: 

1. Starting is often the hardest thing

The best way to start is to just start. That is, don’t wait for a special burst of energy or insight — though, when those things do come, seize them to their max.

2. You have to jump start yourself in the moment of performance

That’s a quote a read somewhere a few years ago. It’s a helpful reminder. When you just start (point 1) and don’t have the burst of energy or creativity, you don’t simply go into your writing cold. You jump start yourself, like starting a car in a freezing Minnesota winter.

To jump start yourself, there are many things you can do. Pray, read some of the Scriptures, do jumping jacks (to get your physical energy up), read a few pages in an author you find inspiring like Seth Godin, review your notes, or do a number of other things. To “just start” doesn’t mean you don’t warm up.

3. Don’t bury the lead

Lead with your most important points rather than starting with something less relevant or irrelevant in an attempt to build up to your most important point. Burying the lead is one of the greatest temptations in writing.

The one exception: John Piper does a great job in many of his books of creating a problem and then resolving it. That’s helpful and interesting and memorable. In those cases, the most important point is the resolution that comes after the problem has developed, which is typically half way through the chapter or so. But even in these cases, you need to start with something super relevant and helpful; the lead in this case should often be the interesting problem you are raising.

More could be said, but these are the top ones that come to mind right now.

(By the way, I call these “advanced” because, although you can easily know these things right from the start, you don’t truly get them until you’ve been through it!)

Come to the Biola Digital Ministry Conference

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I go to the Biola Digital Ministry Conference every year I can. I think since 2007 or so I’ve only missed once (it used to be known as The Christian Web Conference). It is a fantastic time to learn, innovate, and connect with other like-minded people who are excited about ministry and the web.

The Aim and This Year’s Theme

This year’s conference is June 5-7 at Biola. Here’s the aim of the conference:

The Biola Digital Ministry Conferenceis designed to empower individuals with the vision, knowledge, and relationships necessary to be thoughtful designers, developers, and practitioners of digital technologies for the cause of Christ.

Well said.

The theme this year is “The Disruptive Nature of Digital.” The sessions will focus on three key topics: theology, strategy, and technology.

That’s incredible because so often, ministry conferences focus only on strategy and tactics. But they will be focusing on the theology and philosophy of digital ministry as well.

What I’ll Be Talking About

I will also be speaking there again this year. I’d be highly recommending the conference either way, but since I’ll be out there, I’d love to see any of you as well.

My message will be: Practical Usability: Why So Many Websites Frustrate their Users and How to Make Your Site a Destination that People Actually Enjoy.

Last year I gave a theology of usability — why it ought to matter greatly to us to make our websites usable, and the (very interesting) biblical basis for doing so. This year I’m going to dive more fully into the nuts and bolts: how do you actually create a usable website? And how do you do this in the midst of budget constraints? I’ll talk about the core fundamentals of web usability, which we built the Desiring God website on the basis of, and practical principles that are at the core of almost every easy-to-use website.

Also, I love questions, especially super hard ones. So bring your questions on usability or ministry web strategy in general, and we’ll take some time to interact with them.

And, if anyone is interested in getting together to talk in more detail about ministry web strategy while out there, contact me (see the tab above) and I’ll see if we can pull a meal or something together.

The Essential Importance of Usability

Here’s one way to summarize the importance of usability: free is not enough. Even if you post all your content online for free (which I highly recommend!), your content will still not serve people or spread to the extent it can if your site is not usable.

Good content is not enough, either. You have to make your site usable. And, this comes from actually understanding usability and knowing how — you can’t just do what you think will be good. You have to actually know what you are doing.

Other Speakers

Other speakers include:

  • Drew Goodmanson (CEO of MonkDev, creators of Ekklesia 360)
  • Chad Williams (CEO of Five Q)
  • John Mark Reynolds (professor of philosophy at Biola and founder of the Torrey Honors Institute)
  • Brett McCracken (social media manager at Biola University)
  • And many others
Registration
You can register here.

Related Stuff

Here’s the article I wrote back in 2007 at Desiring God on why every ministry should post all of its content online, for free, without requiring registration, in a maximally usable interface.

And here’s the message I gave at the conference last year:

Working Hard is Biblical

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Sounds obvious. Most of the time when people think of a Christian view of work, they think “work hard and be honest.” This is so obvious we easily take it for granted.

But what is the textual basis for working hard? Is it truly biblical, or just a Western idea that we’ve uncritically absorbed?

It is indeed truly biblical. If the West is known for its work ethic, it is in part due to the influence of the Bible. Here are just a few texts, divided into two categories.

1. Paul worked hard, not only in his ministry but also in non-ministry work, in order to give us an example that we all ought to work hard as well:

You yourselves know that these hands ministered to my necessities and to those who were with me. In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive'” (Acts 20:34-35).

“For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us, because we were not idle when we were with you, nor did we eat anyone’s bread without paying for it, but with toil and labor we worked night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you. It was not because we do not have that right, but to give you in ourselves an example to imitate” (2 Thessalonians 3:7-9).

2. Proverbs tells us that if you are slothful in your work you are not only lacking sense and hurting yourself, but are actually akin to a vandal:

“Whoever is slothful will not roast his game, but the diligent man will get precious wealth” (Proverbs 12:27).

“Slothfulness casts into a deep sleep, and an idle person will suffer hunger” (Proverbs 19:15).

“I passed by the field of a sluggard, by the vineyard of a man lacking sense” (Proverbs 24:30).

“Whoever is slack in his work is a brother to him who destroys” (Proverbs 18:9).

Don’t be a vandal. Work hard!

 

 

Jonathan Edwards On … Negotiation

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When you read carefully, you see how this applies. From Charity and Its Fruits:

And they, also, are of a spirit and practice the very opposite of a spirit of love, who show an exorbitantly grasping and avaricious spirit, and who take every opportunity to get all they possibly can from their neighbors in their dealings with them, asking them more for for what they do for or sell to them than it is truly worth, and extorting to the utmost from them by unreasonable demands: having no regard to the value of the thing to their neighbor, but, as it were, forcing out of him all they can get for it.

And they who do these things are generally very selfish also in buying from their neighbors, grinding and pinching them down to the lowest prices, and being very backward to give what the thing purchased is really worth. Such a spirit and practice are the very opposite of a Christian spirit, and are severely reproved by the great law of love, viz., that we do to others as we would have them do to us.

In other words, “think win win” is not a modern invention. As Edwards points out, even in our commercial and business dealings, Christians are to have a view to the good of the other person. We are not to simply seek our own benefit, but are to have regard to what will be good for the other as well.

This is not anti-capitalistic, either. One of the best recent books on negotiation, Getting to Yes, makes the case that this is actually the most effective form of negotiation. It’s called thinking win-win, and it’s not only the most effective long-term (since people don’t like doing business with those that are always pinching them down to the lowest possible amount), nor only the most decent way of treating others; it’s also very Christian. 

Christians seek the good of others–not just in their personal lives (what does that even mean, anyway?), but in all realms of life, at all times.

Wordsmithing: Tips for Writers

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Andy Naselli has a great summary of Doug Wilson’s recent book Wordsmithy: Hot Tips for the Writing Life, which is worth taking a look at.

And, if you read the post, you’ll learn a bonus fact on why it’s not necessarily wrong for me to have ended that sentence with a preposition.

(One other note of interest: Though it’s not as engaging, I used the term “wordsmithing” in the title of this post because I don’t like the term “wordsmithy” that Wilson uses in the title of his book! But that’s a small thing, and probably something Doug would find humorous in light of the subject.)